Warming down from a pretty spirited 12-mile ride, as I rolled through a roundabout and turned left on to a bike path in front of a 16-wheeler, my front wheel broke free and sent me and the bike into a slide that put us right next to the lorry. I could. not figure out why we crashed until I stood my bike up and saw the wheel hanging there.

I felt bad for the big rig driver. He had climbed out of his vehicle to see if I was OK. He looked me in the eyes and kept asking if I was all right. Which I was.

As serendipity would have it, I was about half a mile from Pawel Guba’s shop.  And he was there! And he is not going to just heli-arc it back together, he is going to machine a shank for the inside of the tube so this does not happen again. This area had become compromised when a pretty healthy chuckhole bent the front wheel back in to the rear wheel in the winter of 2011.